


Wings to Catch the Sun

by Lomonaaeren



Series: From Samhain to the Solstice [12]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Gen, Grief, Pre-Femslash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-17
Updated: 2018-11-17
Packaged: 2019-08-25 03:05:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,689
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16653103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lomonaaeren/pseuds/Lomonaaeren
Summary: Ginny goes for a flight one day to try and ease her pain at the losses of the war, and meets her fate high above the ground.





	Wings to Catch the Sun

**Author's Note:**

> Another of my From Samhain to the Solstice fics.

Ginny stared out the window. It was a mild Saturday—mildly cold, mildly windy, mildly raining when the clouds could be bothered to remember. If she looked up, there would be a soft covering of grey clouds over the sky. When she looked down, the grass shone a peculiar green that had to do with the depthless light.

She had plenty of things to do. Piles of NEWT textbooks lay everywhere on her bed. She had half-written essays and half-revised spells and half-done projects. She could do _so_ much if she turned away from the window and went back to studying.

But right now, on this March Saturday, getting the highest NEWTS possible didn’t seem to matter much. Not next to the sudden feeling that struck her in the face.

_Fred would have loved to see this._

Ginny swallowed. Fred would have loved to do _anything_ after he died—look out the window, talk to his siblings, play one more prank. “If he could be alive for just one day,” George said every time Ginny saw him, his eyes staring past her at the wall. When he wasn’t staring, George himself was living, furiously, because he had to do for two.

But right now, George wasn’t here, and Ginny was remembering something Fred had told her once, one of the very few times he had ever talked to her alone.

_On a day when it rains and there’s not much light, that’s the best day for inventing things. I’m not tempted to stare at the sun and wish I was out in it. I’m not tempted to watch the rain and the lightning if there’s not torrents of it, either. I can just curl up with a book and lose myself in my research._

Ginny stood up. She supposed she could live for Fred by curling up with a book, but it wouldn’t be inventing something. She wanted to go flying, which he had also loved. That was her method of living.

And it was in honor of him, she told herself as she stole quietly out of her bedroom and down the stairs into the common room. She paused to cast a Disillusionment Charm on herself when she saw Hermione in front of the fireplace with a stack of books higher than her chair. Hermione wouldn’t grasp that Ginny could go out and live for Fred by flying. She would think it was just an excuse to avoid studying.

_It really isn’t._

Ginny crept out the portrait hole, luckily as a whole swarm of fifth-years came tumbling in and got pounced on by Hermione for OWL study. Then she ran lightly down all the flights of stairs to the entrance hall and out to the Quidditch shed. A lot of the brooms were gone because there were Slytherin and Hufflepuff practices going on, but Ginny didn’t intend to fly in their direction. She would go up above the clouds, to the place where it was the color of the light coming in through the window that Fred had liked, and think.

No one saw her as she took off, since she kept the Disillusionment Charm up until she was a comfortable few hundred meters in the air. Then Ginny relaxed and removed it. She was already above the clouds, which were low and slow-moving, and she banked in the watery sunlight from above. Small drops of rain fell around her as she looked down at the soft, pearly floors of grey beneath her.

_He’s never coming back._

Ginny shut her eyes and lifted higher. She reminded herself that Mum and George were finally getting past the worst of their grief for Fred. If they could do that, so could she.

But it wasn’t the same. They had each other all the time, and they visited his grave every weekend, and they talked with George over tea every day in the shop, too. Ginny only had Ron here, and Ron didn’t like to talk about Fred. Ginny understood that, but sometimes she needed to.

_My brother is never coming back._

Ginny bent over the broom and began to breathe regularly, steadily, the way Alicia and Katie had taught her to breathe when she first became the Seeker. It worked again. The world around her stopped blurring, and Ginny sat up and began to fly towards the edge of the clouds. She would look around as much as she could, memorize all the colors, and then—do something. Maybe paint a picture. To keep the memory of the day when she had lived for Fred.

She soared in looping circles for several minutes, and then paused and frowned as she saw someone heading towards her.

_Oh, no. Is that someone who thinks that I shouldn’t be flying?_

Ginny started to kick the broom higher. Whoever it was should be close enough by now to realize that she was just flying, not spying on the practices or trying to get in some herself, and the higher broom should be a signal for them to leave her alone.

But the person followed her. And their broom was starting to look strange to Ginny. Were they even _on_ a broom?

They came closer. And no, they weren’t.

Ginny stared with her mouth open as they swept by her, close enough to ruffle her hair, not close enough for her to be actually sure who it was, although she saw blonde hair flying. And then she heard the soft laughter as the person turned around, and she knew instantly.

“ _Luna_?”

Luna laughed again. Ginny had heard her laugh like that before, but at a lower volume, somehow. This was high and loud and carefree.

Luna was flying on a pair of beating golden wings. They extended out of her back and over to her sides, running parallel with her arms, and they looked as if they were made of sunlight, they were so delicate. Ginny nearly flipped her broom upside-down with staring. She knew people had tried to invent wings to fly with in the past, but there was always something wrong with them. Spells were temporary, physical wings were too fragile to stay whole or too weak to lift people from the ground, and mechanical wings required too much energy because wizards had to beat them and somehow maintain concentration on where they were going at the same time.

But Luna flapped the wings as if they were attached to her but not too fragile, and not too heavy, and not too energetic. She flapped them as if they grew from her back and had always grown there.

“How did you do that?” Ginny whispered. She felt hushed with wonder, the way she’d felt the first time she saw a unicorn.

Luna looped back in front of her, casually, and smiled as she extended her arms. The wings fluttered separately, as if Luna wanted to prove that they really weren’t the same set of limbs.

“I invented them,” she said.

“How—a spell?” They had to be a spell. They had to be magical. People just didn’t grow wings overnight, and no matter how hard Ginny stared, she couldn’t see any hint of a machine or chains that Luna pulled or metal she wore or _anything_.

“Of course, a spell.” Luna was making gentle fun of her, her eyes shining. “But a spell that I cast on a frame of bone. And I enchanted it under sunlight.” She spread her arms and wings again at the same time. “That was the solution to the problem. You had to make the wings light as light. You can only do it at dawn. It’s simple when you think about it.”

“Simple,” Ginny said, and began to smile. “You solve a problem that’s baffled magical theorists for centuries and decide it’s simple.”

“Of course it is. That’s why they couldn’t solve it. They make things so much more complicated than they need to be. Haven’t you ever found that?” Luna made a little circle in front of her with an easy flap of her wings. “That complicated things are really simple when you think about them.”

“Yes, they are.” Ginny followed Luna with her eyes. It had been complicated to think of a way of honoring Fred, but then she _had_ thought of it, and it had been simple to sneak out onto the pitch and follow her impulses into the air.

She wanted—

She wanted to think about complicated things and render them simple with someone else. Ron and Hermione were so busy all the time with studying. Harry had become distant in a way that Ginny couldn’t have imagined he would before the war. Girls her own age had their war trauma, as did George and her parents. Bill and Charlie were far away most of the time. Percy had apologized, but Ginny knew they would never be as close.

Luna had recovered.

Ginny stretched along the broom and held out her hand. Luna immediately flew over to touch it, gazing at her with untouchable serenity shining in the depths of her blue eyes.

Ginny opened her mouth, not sure what she was going to say until she said it. “Would you go flying with me? And then we can go down and to dinner. I think we should sit at the Ravenclaw table tonight.”

“It’s usually livelier than the Gryffindor one,” Luna said. “The Nargles all congregate on people around me, you know, since the war.”

“Then I’ll frighten them away if they try to harm you,” Ginny said. “The Nargles _or_ the people they cling to.”

Luna’s smile stretched across her face, as radiant as the sun. “Come with me, then,” she said. “If you can keep up with me. I’m only going to sit with you at the Ravenclaw table with you if you can.”

She flung Ginny a look that meant a lot, and was no longer untouchable, before she spread her wings and fled into the wide air.

Ginny drew in breath that was no longer touched with mourning, and flew through the soft light after her.

**The End.**


End file.
